Software implementation errors are one of the most significant contributors to information system security vulnerabilities, making software testing an essential part of system assurance. Combinatorial methods can help reduce the cost and increase the effectiveness of software testing for many applications. This publication provides a self-contained tutorial on using combinatorial testing for real-world software. It introduces the key concepts and methods, explains use of software tools for generating combinatorial tests (freely available on the NIST web site csrc.nist.gov/acts), and discusses advanced topics such as the use of formal models of software to determine the expected results for each possible set of test inputs. The material is accessible to an undergraduate student of computer science or engineering, and includes an extensive set of references to papers that provide more depth on each topic.
